Latest delicacies from Asia will amaze ya'

Nation's Restaurant News, Feb 10, 1997 by Pamela Parseghian

Chefs returning from culinary odysseys in Asia are carrying home suitcases overflowing with exotic ingredients from green papaya to black rice to shrimp paste.

Green papaya, which is used mostly in a Thai salad, has become one of the staples in modem Asian eateries, such as Seattle's Flying Fish, San Francisco's Crustacean, Chicago's Red Light and Typhoon, Vong, Mirezi and Kin Khao, all of which are in New York.

And those trendsetting restaurants are charging a pretty penny for the papaya salad that Mirezi's chef, Anita Lo, recalls seeing in Asia, where it was sold on the streets in plastic bags for 25 cents. In New York Lo sells a "small plate" of green papaya salad for $6.25.

Vong's chef, Pierre Schutz, remembers the flavors of the "refreshing" papaya salad being made to order in Thailand's restaurants. There chefs prepare the sauce by crushing fresh garlic, Thai bird chili peppers, long green beans, lime juice, palm sugar, fish sauce, peanuts, tomato, mint and coriander in a mortar and pestle.

Using the same pestolike technique, Schutz reproduces the salad at Vong and serves it with shrimp and chicken dishes. He says the crunchiness and fresh flavor is retained only when it is made to order. "It gets soggy when done in advance." Furthermore, green papaya oxidizes when cut and left undressed.

Schutz, who purchases football-shaped green papayas from an Asian food purveyor, says this variety differs from the common papaya in that it will not ripen and turn orange in color or become sweet tasting. Instead, it simply rots.

Gerry Rozelle, the new chef of Typhoon, says the large, green papaya, which he also uses, tastes bland. "I believe it is used more for texture than anything else," he says. "It holds up well, but there is not a lot of taste to it."

Christine Keff of Flying Fish likens green papaya to cucumber. "It gives a cool feeling in your mouth, and it has a texture similar to a cucumber", she says.

Keff and most other U.S. chefs are purchasing green papaya to incorporate solely in the Thai salad. But in Thailand green papaya is stir-fried and typically incorporated in soups and curries. The fruit also is used as a tenderizer, according to Franz Faeh, executive chef of the Regent hotel in Bangkok, Thailand.

Faeh prepares at his hotel traditional green papaya dishes, including gang som, a spicy sour soup with shrimp. Because green papaya is inexpensive and plentiful in Thailand, it is common and occasionally served raw with sweet fruits. Faeh recommends choosing smooth-skinned fruit, and he stores it in a cool area or the refrigerator. For peeling the skin, Schutz says, a peeler, rather that a paring knife, works best.

Keff says the best attribute of green papaya is its uniqueness. "It is from for people to try something different."

She learned to prepare the salad during one of her extended travels in Thailand. The recipe she follows incorporates some other out-of-the-ordinary Asian ingredients, such as a sweetened beef jerky, which, she says, tastes like typical beef jerky, but it is sweet as well as salty.

For her curries she has introduced shrimp paste and galangal to her staff of cooks. The shrimp paste is "very stinky, but it adds a necessary flavor", Keff says. "My cooks open up the jar and say, `What is this nasty stuff?' But you use just a little."

Galangal is a type of ginger with a thin skin, light color and round shape. The flavor differs from that of traditional ginger. "It has an odd flavor," Keff says. "You wouldn't want to chomp on it or use much of it." When she replaces ginger with galangal, about one quarter of the quantity is sufficient.

She also chooses to purchase palm sugar for sweetening curries and green papaya salad. "It is more condensed and comes in a cone", she says. "And you have to shave it off." the flavor, however, is similar to that of brown sugar.

The grain most similar to the black rice used at Flying Fish is wild rice. Keff says, "When cooked, black rice is glossy and gets almost blacker." She makes a coconut risotto and rice cake out of the glutinous black rice commonly prepared in Indonesia and Thailand.

In Chicago at the new Confusion restaurant, chef Kevin Shikami says he is using preserved Japanese cherry leaves. He wraps the three-and-a-half-inch-long-by-one-inch-wide leaves around fish before steaming it. "It comes out very fragrant with a sweet and fruity aroma", he says.

He also chooses firm and full fresh water chestnuts to complement roasted striped bass. For sweet-and-sour duck, Shikami purchases Chinese malt vinegar to add contrast to honey and to add a "dark caramelized rich color." He says the vinegar is similar to balsamic, but it has a "malty", flavor.

And for an acidic flavor, Shikami purchases a variety of citrus that looks like a small lime with orange flesh and a tart tangerine flavor. Back in New York at the new Mirezi restaurant, chef Lo serves up a cuisine categorized by the publicist as "Pan Asian -- Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese and Japanese -- with French influence."